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Waves of Russian missiles and jet-powered drones struck Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, killing at least 16 people in an attack that came as Ukraine struggles with a severe shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles.
Russian missiles hit industrial facilities, fuel depots, warehouses and residential buildings, according to the interior ministry and state emergency services.
A school and a children’s hospital were among the locations damaged in the bombardment, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy said: “The Russians had been preparing for a long time, combining different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, aiming to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure.”
He added that missiles and drones also attacked a border crossing with Moldova in the southern Odesa region and hit gas infrastructure in the northern Chernihiv region.
Russia’s defence ministry said it attacked military infrastructure, including a munitions depot and a drone production facility, according to state-run news agencies.
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 15 people were killed in the attack, with another person killed in the greater Kyiv region, according to the state emergency service. Authorities reported more than 40 other people injured.
The bombardment began shortly after midnight in Kyiv, with ballistic missiles striking in quick succession moments after air-raid sirens and text message alerts went out to roughly 4mn residents. The attack lasted for more than eight hours.
Klitschko declared Friday a day of mourning for the victims, and ordered flags to be lowered to half-mast and entertainment events to be rescheduled.
Ukraine has been left helpless against Russian ballistic missiles as it runs short of US-made Patriot air-defence systems.
A global shortage of Ukraine’s only weapon capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles has exposed a critical gap in the country’s defences as Moscow intensifies its attacks ahead of winter.
Ukraine has downed just one of dozens of ballistic missiles fired by Russia this month. Its Patriot launchers have sat largely empty and unused for much of the summer, senior Ukrainian officials told the FT, with the US and other partners unwilling to share or sell interceptors amid concerns over their own stockpiles of the munitions.
Russia began increasing the production of its ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles in spring, and has been producing more than 60 Iskander ballistic missiles each month this year, according to Ukraine’s military defence intelligence agency.
At the same time, the agency said, Russia has increased production of conventional cruise missiles and jet-powered attack drones that have proven harder for Ukraine to take down even with the state of the art drone interceptors and other air-defences.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched various types of ballistic missiles at Kyiv and other cities in the latest attacks, but it did not say how many.
In recent weeks, the air force has stopped routinely disclosing the number of ballistic missiles Russia fires, in order to avoid revealing how many Kyiv fails to intercept and so as not to dampen morale, Ukrainian officials told the FT.
It did report that Russia launched 44 cruise missiles in Thursday’s assault, along with 170 attack drones — “almost half of them jet-powered”. Air-defence systems intercepted 39 cruise missiles and 147 drones, it said.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has intensified its own long-range drone and missile attacks on military and energy facilities deep inside Russia, as well as logistics hubs and supply routes in occupied Crimea in an attempt to isolate the peninsula forcibly annexed by the Kremlin in 2014.
Ukraine has also escalated its assaults on Russian port facilities and cargo vessels in the Black and Azov seas, as it targets Russian vessels to try to cut Russian oil flows.
Russian forces have responded by increasing their attacks on Ukrainian port facilities and ships heading to terminals in Odesa, forcing shipping to a halt this month. No vessels have docked in Ukrainian ports in August, according to Kpler data.